


have i misplaced a part of my soul

by ApatheticRobots



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Communication, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Multi, Not super heavy spoilers but. Spoilers nonetheless., Polyamory, Post-Canon, Romance, Spoilers for the end of Lost Light actually sorry i forgot to mention that before, love triangles are stupid actually :)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:00:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25198882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ApatheticRobots/pseuds/ApatheticRobots
Summary: A thing becomes a Thing(tm) then it becomes a thing and a Thing(tm) again. Whirl's not really an expert in emotions or relationships, but damn if he doesn't find himself wanting to give both of those a try.
Relationships: Cyclonus/Tailgate (Transformers), Cyclonus/Tailgate/Whirl (Transformers), Cyclonus/Whirl (Transformers)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 74





	have i misplaced a part of my soul

**Author's Note:**

> thanks glitch 4 proofreading this ur welcome for ur conned tent uwu
> 
> anyways i love these three idiots and i think emotional honesty is good sometimes actually. miscommunication has comedic value but sometimes we could really just use some clarity and sincerity. also pls ignore any continuity errors theres a lot going on in mtmte/ll and i cannot keep track of it all
> 
> rated T for swearing, title is from "still feel" by half alive because htats my favorite song :)

It was never good when a thing turned into a Thing™, capital T trademarked Thing. When it went from just something that was happening to a proper arrangement. As terrible as it was, it’s amazing how little time it took for this thing they were doing to go from “Whirl and Cyclonus using an unhealthy relationship as a coping mechanism for grief” to just “Whirl and Cyclonus’s relationship.” Not that Whirl would ever call it that, of course.

Not in a million years. Not if his life depended on it.

He honestly wouldn’t have started it if… well, if anything had been slightly different. He supposed if things were different he wouldn’t have needed to start it, but things had gone the way they did, so he did what he did. Which was get Cyclonus to interact with the real world by making himself impossible to ignore. 

He wasn’t trying to make Cyclonus do something stupid like  _ forget _ or  _ move on. _ Because as much as Whirl hated Tailgate for all the grief he’d caused, Cyclonus was head over heels, and he’d probably stab Whirl if he’d tried to insinuate that maybe Tailgate hadn’t been good for him. Even if it was true. He also wasn’t doing this for his own benefit. Not directly, anyways. It benefited him because Cyclonus was really the only person around who tolerated him at all, so if he went catatonic then Whirl would be totally and completely alone. Something he could not deal with. So it was selfish in that regard. He supposed the main reason was a little selfish too, but in a completely different way.

In a brilliant moment of uncharacteristic emotional honesty, Whirl realized he felt  _ guilty. _

Because it had been his fault, really, that Tailgate had basically broken up with Cyclonus. He’d gone against what Cyclonus requested and told Tailgate about the damage he did when he wasn’t conscious. If he hadn’t done that, Tailgate wouldn’t have decided to stay behind.

And if he hadn’t done  _ that-- _

Well. 

It was already a Thing capital T by the time the transmission came in that had Cyclonus burying his face in Whirl’s shoulder without a word, and after that there wasn’t much time before they sort of temporarily died, and Cyclonus didn’t even give Whirl a second glance before he was transforming and flying away.

Which was fine. He could make his own decisions. Even if Whirl thought they weren’t good ones.

He returned with Tailgate in tow, and the two were basically clinging to each other, so they’d clearly made up. Which meant Cyclonus definitely didn’t need Whirl and their Thing anymore. So rather than have to confront those feelings that were getting disgustingly hard to ignore, he didn’t give Cyclonus a chance to tell him that they were breaking it off, ignoring any attempts at conversation and staying a bodily five feet from him at all times. 

When the truth came out, he wasn’t going to let anyone else tell the two of them, so he stopped ignoring them long enough to explain just what was going on. Being proven right felt like shit.

And then Tailgate didn’t disappear. So things… stayed complicated.

He’d give a summary of everything that happened, but it was a  _ lot _ and he wanted to remember basically none of it. He’d been reunited with his scraplets, so that was pretty rad, and Getaway had gotten his aft kicked. Whirl would never complain about that. He had his little heroic moment, and their intrepid crew was whole again with a few new additions. One Lost Light was, presumably, headed back to Cybertron for its passengers to go from wild adventure back to whatever passed for their normal lives.

The other was currently traveling through an unknown universe. Whirl could attest to it, because he was standing over the navigator’s shoulder looking at the computer trying to pinpoint their location and failing. It was a little weird thinking about how there was a completely separate version of himself floating around out there, so he tried not to think about it at all. Instead he kept himself firmly in the ‘here and now,’ on a ship capable of traversing the universe with no obligation or destination. That was pretty neat. It was like an infinite, intergalactic road trip. Whirl had never been the sort to get all excited over new destinations, but finding something none of them had seen before was always fun. He could watch Magnus fumble over not knowing something.

He wondered what the Whirl that had gone back to Cybertron was doing. Probably getting arrested, if he was being honest. 

Whirl… still didn’t really have friends. Turns out exposure did  _ not _ always lead to friendship. He had definitely chilled out since the start of their little escapade, but he was still  _ Whirl, _ so he was still callous and brash and irritating to be around. He wasn’t going to stop being that just so people would hang out with him more. He liked being alone. 

It would’ve been a lot easier to say that if he was actually capable of  _ being alone. _ But some people were determined to make that very hard.

The ship was big-- big enough that if he wanted to avoid someone he could. So keeping away from Cyclonus and Tailgate in what was basically their honeymoon hours should have been easy. He’d stay in his habsuite, and if they came to find him there he’d go to Swerve’s, and if they came to find him  _ there _ he’d hide in the medbay and spend some time with his scraplets, and if they looked  _ there-- _

The point was, there were a lot of places for a mech that didn’t want to be found to hide.

And yet they kept managing to find him in  _ every single one. _

He’d hide in his hab, Cyclonus would stop by and ask him if he was up for a spar. He’d hide in Swerve’s, the both of them would be there and join him at his table or sit on either side of him at the bar. He’d hide in the medbay and Tailgate would just happen to show up for a routine exam or something and see Whirl there and start asking panicked questions about his well being. Hell, he hid in the engine room one time and Cyclonus had found him saying he’d been sent down by Magnus to inspect something. 

He was a  _ terrible _ liar, but it was the fact that he was lying in the first place that made Whirl uneasy. What the hell could either of them possibly  _ want _ from him? They had each other now, Cyclonus didn’t need Whirl’s comfort and Tailgate  _ definitely _ didn’t need to be spending time around the guy that had caused him to literally nearly die at one point. 

Was there an issue with their relationship? He didn’t think so-- there were far too many complaints about their PDA for that to be it. He toyed with the idea that they were somehow mad at him, then decided that made little sense when matched up with their almost  _ clingy _ behavior.

It finally boiled over one afternoon. Whirl had been dozing in the empty office they had collectively turned into a sort of living area when Nautica had come in and told him Tailgate was looking for him.

“I’ll go find him then,” he said, getting up and immediately heading the opposite direction that would take him to his habsuite. Tailgate would probably look there if he didn’t find Whirl in the rec room. So Whirl would be as far away as possible. Tailgate was fine company most of the time, really, something Whirl could say with confidence because of the sheer amount of time he’d spent around the minibot in the past few weeks. He was just sick and tired of being followed everywhere.

“Whirl!”

Speak of the devil. Damn it.

He didn’t have to exaggerate the amount of annoyance in his sigh as he stopped walking, looking back and narrowing his optic at the rapidly approaching form of Tailgate. “What? Need someone killed or something?”

“What? No, I--”

“Dunno why you’d ask me even if you did. Your boyfriend could kill a man just fine. Ask him instead.” And he turned back and kept walking the way he’d been going.

“Whirl!” Rapid clunking footsteps triled after him. “I don’t want anyone murdered, I wanted to ask whether you wanted to join me and Cyclonus for a movie night! We found some new Earth videos on the last planet we stopped at. There’s this one about dinosaurs, and--”

“Don’t really feel like third-wheeling a date, thanks.”

There was a harsh huff from Tailgate, and before Whirl could react there was a tiny hand grabbing one of his claws.

He would never admit that he actually yelped. He ripped his claw away, optic bright and wide, internal fans whirring a mile a minute. Tailgate seemed disturbed by the reaction, and that was something of a comfort, but he’d still just  _ grabbed Whirl’s claw without asking. _ “What the  _ hell, _ ” he hissed, “were you  _ thinking?” _

“I-- I didn’t mean--”

“It doesn’t matter what you  _ meant, _ ” he moved forward, and Tailgate moved back, and he didn’t realize he had the minibot up against the wall in a rather compromising position until he went to threaten him again and realized just how they were standing.

What made it worse was the fact that Tailgate wasn’t looking at him with any kind of fear at all. It was  _ concern _ written on his visor. 

Threatening was a lot less fun when the target wasn’t  _ actually _ threatened.

Whirl turned away with a huff, once again considering down the hallway. He didn’t have a destination in mind. “Just buzz off, okay? I’m not interested in whatever consolation prize you guys keep trying to bother me with. I  _ lost. _ I get it. If you need me as a buffer or something just tell me, otherwise stop clinging to me like a couple of sparklings.”

That should have been the end of it, but Tailgate was even more stubborn than  _ Whirl _ sometimes, so once again footsteps trailed after him. He was grabbed again, but at least Tailgate was slightly capable of learning, because he went for Whirl’s forearm rather than his claw. “We aren’t trying to console anything, and you’re not a buffer. We’ve been hanging out with you and trying to include you in stuff because we  _ like _ you. We want to spend time with you, Whirl. Both of us.”

“Well, maybe I don’t--”

“Cyclonus told me.” 

That… made him stop walking. Tailgate didn’t let go of his arm. “What?”

“He told me about what you did. How you helped him after I… after what  _ I _ did. He said you seemed pretty serious about it, like--  _ actually _ serious.”

There were alarm bells going off in Whirl’s head. Both metaphorical and literal, he was pretty sure there was a warning on his HUD. Something about “imminent danger.” He’d never pegged Tailgate as the jealous or revenge-seeking type, but maybe he should have paid a little attention. He was at least comforted by the fact that without his superpowers, Tailgate didn’t stand much chance of beating Whirl in a fight. Plus Whirl could fly. So he could run away a lot easier.

“I wanted to thank you.”

His processor stopped short, then frantically tried to reroute itself to accommodate the unexpected progression of the conversation. “What?”

“I wanted to thank you,” Tailgate repeated, “for being there for him when I wasn’t.”

“But--”  _ What??? _ “It was my fault you weren’t there in the first place, I--”

“You just told me what I needed to be told,” the minibot soothed. “Not what I  _ wanted  _ to hear, like Cyclonus was doing, what I actually  _ needed _ to hear. I was hurting him. It was bad. And I probably shouldn’t have gone about stopping that the way I did, but it needed to stop. You were looking out for him. And I’m really grateful.”

What else could Whirl do but stare in disturbed silence, really? Tailgate was basically  _ thanking Whirl _ for shacking up with his boyfriend while he was busy  _ dying. _ What the hell was he supposed to say to that?

“Uh,” was apparently what he decided on, “you’re welcome?”

Tailgate sighed. “Come with me. Please.”

He couldn’t very well say no. Not after Tailgate’s admission had knocked him so off-kilter. So he just let the little minibot drag him along, staring at the cheerful blue of his plating and ignoring the weird looks they were given. When they got to his and Cyclonus’ habsuite, he nudged Whirl in ahead of him, then closed the door behind them. 

They’d pushed the berths together at some point, as well as somehow acquired several pillows and blankets, so it looked more like a nest than the flat slabs of metal that berths usually were. Leagues more comfortable. Cyclonus was kneeling in front of a large screen, fiddling with a small grey box beneath it. He glanced up, and upon noticing Whirl, gave him a pleasant smile. It was still weird seeing how open he was with his emotions these days.

“C’mon,” Tailgate said, grabbing his arm again and dragging him towards the berth-nest. With no small amount of effort he got Whirl to sit down. Then promptly deposited himself on Whirl’s lap.

“Um,” Whirl said. He glanced up at Cyclonus, because that was his partner, he couldn’t possibly be okay with this?? But instead of a scathing glare or verbal reprimand, he just got another one of those little smiles. It was such a strange expression, especially seeing it on Cyclonus’s face. Genuine and open and…  _ satisfied. _ Like everything was right with the world. Like his boyfriend wasn’t currently getting cozy on someone else’s lap.

The screen lit up, the dramatic opening credits of an Earth-sourced movie playing. Cyclonus stood and headed over to join them on the berth. Whirl expected him to take Tailgate, maybe set the minibot on his own lap, but he didn’t. Just pulled his legs up and pressed himself against Whirl’s side.

This was weird. This was really, really weird. Fucking rad. But also weird. 

It took Whirl about fifteen minutes into the movie to realize Cyclonus and Tailgate had strategically positioned themselves in a way that made it nigh impossible for Whirl to get up. Normally he was a lot better at noticing when someone had him trapped, mostly because it made his processor overheat with panic, but not this time. This time, Tailgate had him pinned and Cyclonus had an arm around his shoulders (one he also realized he hadn’t noticed) to keep him from slipping to the side. 

Now that he had noticed the confinement, he really should have been panicking. Being held down had only ever ended terribly for him, as his claws and singular optic reminded him, and as was common sense. You couldn’t fight back if you were trapped. So he should have been panicking.

But Tailgate was calm, and Cyclonus was calm, and he could tell how at ease they were, so he was having a hard time getting himself worked up.

He zoned out about halfway through the movie. It was interesting enough, lots of fighting and shouting and the dinosaurs Tailgate had mentioned, but Whirl didn’t care much about the plot. Zoning out for him often entailed getting lost in his own thoughts, and he definitely had a lot of thoughts to get lost in, but this time it was more he just half dozed off. What snapped him back to awareness was the sudden darkness in the room as the screen shut off.

“Oh,” he muttered, “it’s over?”

A quiet laugh. “Yes,” Cyclonus said. With the screen off, the suite was dark, the only light being their various optics. A dim mix of red, blue, and yellow. 

“Well. Guess I should get going, then,” he said, not making a single motion to move Tailgate or try and stand at all. Like many things, he wouldn’t say it out loud if you pointed a gun at him, but he was comfortable. They weren’t even doing anything and he was enjoying himself. Which was weird, because normally Whirl needed to be completely occupied lest he succumb to dangerous boredom. Whirl being bored meant someone would be spending time in the brig and someone else would end up missing a limb. Whether Whirl was in the brig or amputated depended on the day, as well as how much the other party had pissed him off.

But now he wasn’t doing anything, and he didn’t feel like attacking anyone at all. There wasn’t that telltale twitch he got in his claws when he needed to be doing something.

“Or,” Tailgate said, shifting in Whirl’s lap so he could look up at him. “you could stay.”

“Yes,” Cyclonus said again. Then added, “you could.”

Now, there was a conundrum. Every source, both internal and external, were telling Whirl that he should stay right where he was. Whirl was a stubborn mech, but he wasn’t incapable of listening to reason. Even if that ‘reason’ made no sense at all. There were a lot of questions rattling around in his head, and a lot of them were absolutely nonsensical.

He decided to ask the only question he could really put into words. His voice was quiet when he eventually spoke; “...Why?”

“Why what?” 

“Why should I?” No, that sounded too hostile. “Why-- why do you  _ want _ me to?”

“Because we  _ like _ you, Whirl,” Tailgate said softly, a repeat of his earlier sentiment that convinced Whirl to go with him in the first place. “We like spending time with you, and we like having you with us.”

“But you guys are… You know…” he made a vague gesture with his claws. “ _ Together. _ Why would you want me there in the middle of it all?”

“I mean I’d kind of like to be in the middle sometimes, but if that’s what you want--”

“Wait, what?”

“What?”

“Tailgate,” Cyclonus said with a sigh.

“Oh. Too fast?”

“Whirl,” Cyclonus placed a hand on his arm, prompting Whirl to look over and meet his optics. “No one here is good at just saying what they feel. But we will get nowhere if we do not speak clearly, so I will say this now; Tailgate and I both feel deeply for you, and would like to invite you to join us in a romantic capacity.”

The part of Whirl’s brain that fell back on sarcastic defense whenever he was approached by anything emotional was saying something along the lines of ‘ _ Wow I think that was the most words about feelings I’ve ever heard you string together at one time,’ _ but it was loudly drowned out by the genuine part of his brain screaming at the top of its metaphorical lungs. The concept that not just one but  _ two _ mechs were  _ interested _ in him, enough to outright  _ say it _ , was absolutely foreign. He wasn’t quite sure how to deal with it.

“Cyclonus! You broke him.”

“I did not.” A gentle hand on his shoulder. “Whirl? Are you alright?”

“I-- Uh.” There was the low whine of someone’s fans working overtime, and Whirl was unfortunately unsurprised to realize it was himself making that sound. “I’m okay.”

“I apologize if that was too forward, I--”

“No, no, it’s. Fine. I never would have gotten the hint if you… didn’t just say it. I’m not very good with talking to people about feelings, or talking to people in general. Not good with people. Pretty bad, actually, my track record with close relationships is pretty terrible.”

“I’ve noticed,” Cyclonus said dryly.

“I’m a terrible berthmate. I leave scrap metal and stuff everywhere. Also I talk while I’m in recharge, and I have trouble sitting still.”

“Oh, same here,” Tailgate piped up. “About both things.”

“I’m kind of a jerk. I break things. Usually on accident, but sometimes on purpose.”

“We’ll find a way to fix anything you break.”

Whirl realized this was just going to be an endless cycle of him giving them reasons they should want nothing to do with him and them brushing off every single one. He could go on about every little thing he hated about himself and they’d never actually make any progress one way or the other, except making Whirl question the self-deprecating mindset he’d had for so many years. Maybe he should just quit while he was ahead on this one. 

Man. They really needed a psychiatrist on this ship. There were  _ so  _ many unresolved mental issues absolutely  _ everywhere.  _

“I… Don’t really know what I’m doing. With any of this.” He fidgeted with his claws, closing one around the other like one of those metal puzzles. “I don’t have much experience at all with any kind of thing like this.”

“You have at least a little,” Cyclonus said. “I can say this with confidence.”

Oh. Right. The Thing™. “That-- That was a little different--”

“Not much. The only difference is that Tailgate is with us now.”

“But that’s--” He laughed, a nervous sound. “That’s  _ very _ different. That’s the whole reason the Thing happened at all, was because Tailgate  _ wasn’t _ there. But he’s here now, so what do you need  _ me _ for?” He couldn’t be useful to them anymore. They had no reason to keep him around. “I mean, hell, it was my fault he wasn’t there in the first place. Remember that? I did what you asked me not to and told Tailgate and then he stayed behind and--” A hand placed on his chest cut him off.

“We forgive you,” Tailgate said, affirmed by Cyclonus’s nod.

“...Oh.” And if that didn’t just make Whirl wish he could still cry. Actually, maybe it was a good thing he couldn’t.

“We will not hold it against you if you say no,” Cyclonus said gently, “nor will we cease to be your friends. We care for you whether or not you are in a relationship with us. If you need time, we shall give it to you, and we will leave you alone until you make a decision.”

Actually, being alone right now sounded like the worst possible thing in the entire universe, and Whirl had dealt with a  _ lot _ of things. 

Tailgate, probably taking Whirl’s silence and stillness as discomfort, moved to climb off his lap. That would not do. His arms moved without him realizing to wrap around Tailgate’s midsection and keep him seated. 

“Whirl?”

“I…” His vocalizer died. He cleared his throat, reset it, and tried again; “I don’t know what I’m doing. But… I want to figure it out. With both of you.”

He had absolutely no time to brace himself before Tailgate was wrapping his arms around his neck and clinging to him like his life depended on it. Cyclonus’s arm, still settled around his shoulders, tightened its hold. He wrapped one arm around each of them and let his optic go dark. Hugging with claws wasn’t easy, there was always the risk of him accidentally hurting someone, but he was too comfortable to really care about that right now.

A thing turning into a Thing™ was  _ almost _ never good. A Thing™ usually meant the world would become far more complicated, and much harder to deal with. Defining a thing brought implications and expectations and just made everything worse. 

Whirl sighed, letting himself relax into the nest of pillows and blankets with the two mechs pressed up against him. Maybe sometimes defining a thing made it just a little bit better. 

**Author's Note:**

> i love whirl


End file.
